Records retention and disposal schedule for Masindi Municipal Council

Abstract

The project aimed at developing a Records Retention and Disposition Schedule for the registry of Masindi Municipal Council. This was achieved by examining the current records retention and disposal practices, identifying the necessary requirements for developing a records retention and disposal schedule and, designing and implementation of a records retention schedule for Masindi Municipal Council. The qualitative approach was used together with a case study project design in which interviewing was the only data collection method that was used in this project. This led to the use of an interview guide as data collection instrument. The sample size was nine (9) participants which was obtained through the application of the data saturation principle. Findings revealed that MMC is faced with several consequences such as loss of valuable documents, cost ineffectiveness, congestion of records in office, denied access to information, informal decisions, audit queries and penalties, time consuming, inaccurate data and delays in the retrieval which were all attributed to an uncontrolled records retention and disposition. All these resulted from the appraisal of records based on registry official’s personal whim. Findings also identified the requirements (functional and nonfunctional) necessary for designing and creating a RRDS for MMC. Major conclusions were; the need for written policies to regulate records retention and disposition, streamlining of lists identifying all forms of records and providing professional training and workshop to records managers in MMC registry. Major recommendations included regularly revisiting and updating the developed RRDS by MMC records managers together with a team of experts, ensure that all the available records regardless of their format, are covered in the developed RRDS with proper retention periods well aligned against each of them in particular, conducting continuous professional training for all records officers and the continued management of records destruction certificate as well as their inclusion on the list of records for scheduling.